Mongol Empire map: how the largest contiguous empire grew and split

The Mongol Empire is the largest contiguous land empire there has ever been. At its peak, around 1279, the lands ruled by the descendants of Genghis Khan stretched from the Sea of Japan to the Danube and from Siberia to the Persian Gulf: about 24 million km², roughly a sixth of the world's land. Only the British Empire, scattered across oceans, ever covered more.

The empire was also short-lived as a single state. Within sixty years of Genghis Khan's proclamation it had split into four khanates, and within another century most of them had collapsed. On the Panchronia globe the borders change with the timeline; below are the key stages.

The Mongol Empire at a glance

Genghis Khan: from the steppe to China and Khwarazm

In 1206, at a great assembly on the Onon River, Temüjin was proclaimed Genghis Khan. He reorganised the tribes into an army of units of ten, a hundred, a thousand and ten thousand, in which loyalty to the khan came before loyalty to the clan. The first targets were the settled states to the south: Western Xia and the Jurchen Great Jin, which ruled northern China. In 1215 the Mongols took Zhongdu.

In 1218 the governor of Otrar, a city of the Khwarazmshah, killed a Mongol trade caravan. The answer was the invasion of Khwarazm: Bukhara, Samarkand and Urgench were taken in 1220–1221 and the empire of the Khwarazmshahs ceased to exist. A detachment under Jebe and Subutai went on round the Caspian Sea, crossed the Caucasus and in 1223 defeated the Rus princes and the Cumans at the Battle of the Kalka River, then turned back east.

Genghis Khan died in 1227 during the campaign that destroyed Western Xia (Fall of Western Xia and death of Genghis Khan). His sons and grandsons kept expanding the empire for another half-century.

Batu's western campaign: Rus and Europe

In 1235 an assembly in the new capital Karakorum decided on a campaign to the west, led by Batu, a grandson of Genghis Khan. In 1236 the Mongols ravaged Volga Bulgaria, and in the winter of 1237–1238 came the Mongol invasion of Rus': Ryazan, Vladimir and a dozen other towns were taken. In 1240 Batu took Kiev.

In April 1241 two Mongol armies won within days of each other at Legnica in Poland and Mohi in Hungary (Mongols in Europe: Legnica and Mohi), and reached the Adriatic. Then the news came that the great khan Ögedei had died, and in 1242 the army turned back. Batu settled on the lower Volga and founded the Golden Horde, which ruled the steppe from the Danube to the Irtysh and took tribute from the Russian principalities.

The peak: Baghdad, Kublai and the Song

Under the great khan Möngke (1251–1259) the Mongols attacked on two fronts at once. In the Middle East his brother Hülegü destroyed the Assassins' fortresses and in 1258 carried out the Mongol sack of Baghdad, ending the Abbasid Caliphate. Only the Mamluks of Egypt stopped the advance: in 1260 they defeated a Mongol army at the Battle of Ain Jalut, the first major defeat the Mongols could not avenge.

In the east, Möngke's other brother Kublai Khan continued the war against the Southern Song. In 1271 he proclaimed the Yuan dynasty with its capital at Dadu (Beijing), and in 1279 the last Song fleet was destroyed at the Battle of Yamen. China was united under a foreign dynasty for the first time. This is the moment usually shown as the Mongol Empire at its peak.

Kublai's further campaigns failed. Two fleets sent against Japan, in 1274 and 1281, were wrecked by storms, the second by the typhoon the Japanese called kamikaze, "divine wind" (Kamikaze typhoon wrecks the Mongol fleet). Campaigns in Vietnam and Java also ended in retreat.

Four khanates instead of one empire

After Möngke's death in 1259, Kublai and his brother Ariq Böke fought a four-year war for the throne, and the unity of the empire ended. Four states took its place, each ruled by a different branch of Genghis Khan's family:

• the Yuan Dynasty: China, Mongolia, Korea as a vassal; its ruler kept the title of great khan;
• the Golden Horde: the steppes of Eastern Europe and western Kazakhstan, with tribute from Rus;
• the Chagatai Khanate: Central Asia between the Amu Darya and the Tian Shan;
• the Ilkhanate: Iran, Iraq, the Caucasus and eastern Anatolia.

They often fought each other, but the roads across Eurasia stayed open. This was the time of the Pax Mongolica: merchants, envoys and missionaries travelled from Europe to China, among them Marco Polo (Travels of Marco Polo). The same roads may also have carried the plague: the Black Death reached Europe in 1347 from the Crimea, after a Golden Horde siege of the Genoese port of Caffa.

Decline

The Ilkhanate collapsed in 1335 when its last khan died without an heir. In China the Red Turban Rebellions drove out the Yuan in 1368, and the Mongols withdrew to the steppe, where the Northern Yuan carried on. The Chagatai Khanate split in two, and from its western part rose Timur, who was not a descendant of Genghis Khan and ruled through puppet khans.

The Golden Horde lasted longest. In 1380 the Muscovites defeated the warlord Mamai at the Battle of Kulikovo, but two years later Khan Tokhtamysh burned Moscow. In the fifteenth century the Horde broke up into the khanates of Kazan, Crimea, Astrakhan and Sibir, and the Great Stand on the Ugra River of 1480 is usually taken as the end of Moscow's dependence on it. The last state ruled by Genghis Khan's descendants in Europe, the Crimean Khanate, was annexed by Russia in 1783.

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